Skyfall’s producers have released the first in a series of video blogs by the film’s director, Sam Mendes. In it, the man behind the new Bond movie says the tough 2006 reboot, Casino Royale, “blew me away” and made him realise “that it is still possible to make a big, fabulous, glamorous, escapist movie and yet at the same time to say something about the world that we’re living in”.

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“The roots of me doing this movie start way before anybody approached me, because I, like anyone else, have my own personal relationship with Bond, which began when I was nine or ten years old,” Mendes said. “I’ve always been a fan of the movies.”

Mendes had special praise for Daniel Craig, star of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and now Skyfall: “I was genuinely blown away by Casino Royale,” the latest 007 director said. “I felt [Daniel Craig] was a real man in a real situation again. It reminded me of the way I felt when I watched the Sean Connery movies. So for me it was not actually that difficult a decision.”

On the challenge of helming the new instalment of such a high-profile series, Mendes – director of American Beauty, Revolutionary Road and Road to Perdition – commented: “The way any director deals with a huge film is in tiny, incremental steps. One day at a time. If you try to make the entire movie all at once, your head will explode. Particularly a movie on this scale.”

Skyfall sees Mendes return to his native Britain, where he built a reputation as a theatre director before beginning his movie career in Hollywood. “Ironically I’ve never made an English movie,” Mendes said. “I’ve made six movies and this is the first time I’ve shot in this country. I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing Bond!”